Critical Budget Cuts Coming

The California Budget and Policy Center is hosting its annual budget preview on line. http://calbudgetcenter.org

A major crisis is approaching as the Trump Administration and the Republican Congress promises to cut the Affordable Care Act.  Some 4 million in California will loose their health care and be pushed to county clinics- a true disaster.
All health care services for this 4 million will be drastically reduced. this will produce a $16 Billion shortfall in the state budget.
This is a crisis in health care greater than the crisis in state school spending during the Great Recession.
Note: For those of you who did not vote- millions of your neighbors and family members will now lose their health care and other support programs as a consequence of the House Republican budget.
It is difficult to predict how and where the cuts will come.
At the same time, the House budget and the Trump proposals will produce big tax cuts at the federal level for high income individuals and corporations.
The crisis of the repeal of the ACA ( or Obama Care) will produce a crisis in the California state budget.  All budget programs and areas will be subject to cuts. 

Affordable Care Act- DSA

The DSA National Political Committee (NPC) welcomes the 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”). The decision affirms the right of Congress to legislate in the interest of the general welfare of the American people.

We applaud the gains for ordinary American families that will come with the ACA. Over ten million members of moderate income families will gain coverage under Medicaid; millions of young Americans between the age of 21 and 26 will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance; children and adults with pre-existing conditions will now be covered by the same policies as those deemed by insurers to be “healthy”; and over one hundred million Americans will now be free of lifetime expenditure limits on their coverage.

DSA also recognizes, however, that the ACA will fail to curtail ever-rising health care costs driven by the profit-seeking of private insurers and private health-care providers. Only a single-payer or “Medicare for All” system would provide truly affordable universal coverage by granting a single public insurer bargaining leverage over private providers.